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The Selfie-Stick Backlash Involves Awkward Photos Of People Using Selfie Sticks

On a fine San Francisco evening earlier this month, I was walking down Market Street with a friend who recently moved here from Hong Kong and spotted a family clustered together smiling at something on the end of a stick that the matriarch was holding out in front of them. It took me a second to realize what was happening. The stick held a smartphone. The family was taking a selfie. A group walking next to us started laughing hysterically at the sight. A guy tried to pull out his own smartphone to capture the scene but he wasn’t fast enough; the stick was already being collapsed. “That is un-f***ing believable,” he said. My Hong Kong friend was surprised by our surprise. “It’s a selfie stick,” she explained. “They’re all over Asia.”

Zendesk’s CEO used a selfie stick to capture his team ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange

The Huffington Post took note of the “monopod” or selfie stick in March with a report from Singapore on its popularity among teens in the East who realized they could take better selfies if the camera was farther away from their bodies: no stretched faces at the edge of the photo from a smartphone’s curved lens, more background in the shot, more people squeezed in, and more ambiguity once the photo is posted about whether it was in fact a selfie or whether the person pictured actually had a friend who wanted to take a photo of him or her. Like an invasive species, the selfie stick fad is spreading, and it’s made its way to the U.S. The sticks which go for $8 to up to $44 haven’t cracked the top 100 in Amazon’s Cell Phone Accessories category, but the stick is popping up …or out… all over the States: on Wall Streetfor Zendesk’s IPO, at Busch Gardens in Tampa, at a sporting event in Cleveland, and at a high school graduation in New Jersey. And the selfie stick fad has a twin brother fad: taking pictures of people taking pictures with a selfie stick. TwitterTwitter, Tumblr, and Instagram are awash in both #selfiestick photos and photos mocking the people who are using them.

“This is less awkward than asking a stranger to take a photo for you?” tweeted one critic. It may be more awkward but it also gives you more control of exactly how you want the photo to look.

“Yah. These people exist,” said another, hashtagging the tweet #Twophonesandacamera because of the proliferation of photo-taking devices in the shot. “We need to stop. Selfie game too strong,” said a person on Tumblr sharing a photo from a family picnic.

“I only took this selfie so I could capture the couple behind us using their #selfiestick,” he captioned this.

Some of the selfie-stick-shock photos are taken surreptitiously by someone pretending to take a selfie in order to capture the person behind them. Which is just wonderfully meta. The selfie-stick-takers on the other hand cannot be surreptitious. Their stick is a loud (and proud) declaration of self-portraiture. No covert selfies for them. Putting a smartphone on the end of a stick says, “I’m not ashamed that I want this photo of myself.” Those taking photos of the person holding the stick are saying, “Well, you should be.”

In the cultural war over whether selfies are self-expressive art worth elevating or digital narcissism taken to new levels of ridiculousness, the selfie-stick is a new battle line. It could be a short lived battle though, prompted by the novelty of the recent import. One day, selfie sticks may be as ubiquitous as selfies themselves; you barely notice anymore when you see someone staring into a smartphone mugging for her own shot, creating her very own VanGoghgram. Perhaps selfie stick shots will happen enough that seeing them will not be strange and so the “twin brother” fad will die. I, for one, kind of dread that day coming.

At least one commentator thinks of the selfie stick as the opposite of narcissism, and instead a gesture of unselfishness. An English tour guide who noticed that his Malaysian customers were increasingly bringing the sticks on his trips said he welcomed them. “No need for contortions or pleas to passers by,” he blogged. People are obsessed with getting photos of themselves in front of various monuments, meaning a big part of his job is to shuffle through cameras taking shot after shot of couples and families posing in front of the Big Ben. For him, the selfie stick is freedom.

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Right! When I seen them, they were for digital cameras. The selfie fad is somewhat disturbing but I’m guilty of it…though I don’t think I’d use a stick for it. I could see the perk though, don’t have to worry about a stranger hauling off with your phone or camera as much.

What if you are travelling? Now you don’t have to rely on the kindness of strangers to help take your photo. Or if there are no strangers around? My GF got one from http://shopselfiestick.com and I am a bit sad to admit that it changed my perception on the whole “selfie” trend.